writing is hard work

Writing is hard work sitting here at a South Albert location in a parking lot sidewalk coffee bar. A wire stool is my seat at a round table looking north at an Earls restaurant as cars drive by on a very busy street. Writing paper hanging over the edge of the table fluttering in the wind and without words or even concrete thought waiting in anticipation for even a doddle and looking to white. The smell of the food being prepared makes my mouth water. The coffee is a treat at the end of a long month; Cameral Macchiatto’s flavor will have to last as the cost is low on my priorities. I sit here thinking how I can make these words into short stories that make sense and flow from one chapter to the next with character development and insight. From one coffee shop conversation to the next. Meeting people and connecting with ideas as this world seems large yet everyone seems to know one and other in some way. Put it up to social networking were you can have two completely different chats with two different people from totally independent and isolated parts of this earth and feel that they are sitting by you.
Yet I sit here alone drinking Italian coffee made by made be an Australian student who fallowed her Canadian boyfriend from England in a shop sandwiched between a drugstore and a nameless designer eyeglass outlet with terrific fumes drifting over in a blue haze.

Someone said that the Salzburg story was too disjointed and poetry hiding as pros which in a way is heavy on my mind this day in June. Could not resist that one!
I am simply a man with stuff on his mind. I meet friends from time to time in coffee shops in and around this town. When I look back over time, that being my time here, the pattern was set long ago. Hanging with friends at a shop that is warm, most times I have been there early waiting for them to arrive. I grow up in Northern Canada were the winter s are cold and warmth was important. I now live in a place of extremes. The temperature can vary from minus 40 in the cold months to plus 40 in the hot mouths and the wind feels like it can peels one skin off. What is important I think is family, honesty and integrity!

Writing and these stories is an outlet of sorts to pass the time. An idea being that a story can be facts interplayed with fiction. Not that facts are the truth only that they are an illusion hiding in reality diluted in folklore. Wow that one hurt.
Coffee is a metaphor for life waiting to be tasted. Some bitter others sweet and always better fresh but stale better than nothing. Superficial as that sounds, if all else fails than have tea.

Still I am sitting here waiting for Dan to call who is a friend from high school who just came on facebook. What is the number of your phone he asked? The last time I chatted with Dan was one year before when I was coaching baseball. We spoke for a couple seconds that day. The time before that he visited for a couple hours refusing to stay the evening saying something about needing to get back. Throughout the years there have been few friends that have been there for everything. Dan is one of those few. Conversation just begins from were it left off. Thinking back to the time when Dan signed me up for the military because he had signed up. Joining the airborne almost like the French foreign legend going off to new worlds or countries similar maybe to the movies we enjoyed watching as kids. He sent me a t shirt from Cypress once where he served with a sniper rifle. Who would have thought going through those barrels of 22 bullets as kids would turn into a job as morbid as that sounds. Neil say hi as he passes by the table with his guitar in hand ending my though process for now.